The electrocardiogram (ECG) is widely used for diagnosis of heart diseases. Good quality ECGs are utilized by physicians for interpretation and identification of physiological and pathological phenomena. However, in real situations, ECG recordings are often corrupted by artifacts. Two dominant artifacts present in ECG recordings are high-frequency noise caused by electromyogram induced noise, power line interferences, or mechanical forces acting on the electrodes and baseline wander (BW) that may be due to respiration or the motion of the patients or the instruments. These artifacts severely limit the utility of recorded ECGs and thus need to be removed for better clinical evaluation.
Although methods have been developed for ECG enhancement, to date the real-time processing of ECGs has proven difficult, and yet critical to the success of ECG analysis. For example, many filtering techniques result in modifying the width and amplitudes of features in the ECG signal that are critical to interpreting the physiological implications of the signal. Described herein are ECG enhancement apparatuses (devices and systems) and methods configured to provide rapid and reliable de-noising of the ECG signal in real time.